SDG Detail

ENVP U6225Ethics, Values, and Justice

Postgraduate course

Project description

The purpose of this course is to examine the claims made by multiple stakeholders for use of the environment, both natural and built, and to determine how contention among them can be ethically resolved in the policy process. Over time, six major clusters of stakeholders have arisen, expressing environmentalist standpoints: three, including proponents of wilderness, ecosystems, and nonhuman species, have been called nonanthropocentric; and three, including proponents of conservation, environmental justice, and sustainability, have been called anthropocentric. Among them a diverse array of ethical quarrels has arisen, yet today the sustainability outlook appears to be ascendant in popular and public discourse. Claims made regarding greater or lesser use of both natural and human resources continue to be debated nonetheless. Many are related to the issues of whether present use should take into account past wrongful, often inter-racially prejudicial actions, and future-regarding, often inter-generationally beneficial actions. The course aims to examine specific principles, such as polluter pays for pollution, prior free informed consent, transboundary accountability, and common responsibility, which can be used to resolve ethical issues. Consideration is given to the possibility of both collective and individual ethical action, even in situations of corruption, including subtle forms involving campaign contributions with a pay-to-play aspect. The objective is to discover how such ethical problems can be managed in the public policy process.